Category Archives: AA Sobriety

Alcoholics Anonymous: We Surely have no Monopoly

Posted in AA Sobriety, Recovery, Sobriety by

Recovery Options“Love and tolerance of others is our code” (Big Book 84).

I am not a very lovely and tolerant person. I’m just not. I try my darnedest, but… no. Quiet, though, I have improved upon. Pausing when agitated. Walking away. Not engaging. This morning, though, I woke up to yet another email explaining to me the fallibility of AA. Ugh. When I posted last week that this conversation bores me, a man called me a coward. He said that since his opinion differed with mine, I was scared to acknowledge him. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am sorry he feels spurned or neglected or failed or whatever it is by AA. I know such feelings exist. I just… I don’t know what to say about it.

I know there is a lot of hostility towards AA out there. And I know some people feel the need to express their dissatisfaction, but let me set something straight, once and for all. This is my blog. I write it. I draw the pictures. Its about my life, my perceptions, my recovery. I make no bones about it. I’ve have my reasons for breaking my anonymity. I wrote about them in in my post Part Three: Why I Write about my Alcoholism: (https://annkroger.com/2014/09/26/part-three-why-i-write-about-my-alcoholism/) But this, this is not a Celebrate Recovery blog. It is not a SMART Recovery Blog. This is not by the sheer force of willpower blog. And I do not feel in the spirit of equanimity that I have to give equal time to any of them because my blog is not about the many forms of recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. It’s about my recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. And I’ve chosen AA.

With that said, I have never once said any other approach does not work. I never would. I have no basis on which to judge anything. I have not looked into them. I do not know what their methods are. I do not know what they teach. I’m not a coward; I’m just busy. I have two jobs, two dogs, this blog, my art, a family, a wedding to plan, and a fiancé who just had open-heart surgery. I have neither the time nor the interest to participate in a discussion that affects my life in no way whatsoever.

Furthermore, I find it odd that anyone would even engage in that discussion. The Big Book tells us, “In all probability, we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the alcohol problem in all its ramifications. Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly,” (xxi). I have a more than a couple friends in Celebrate Recovery. I have friends in SMART recovery. I, as well as most of my friends, engage or have engaged in some form of therapy/ psychoanalysis. Many AAs are on some kind of medication for anxiety or depression or any number of things. AA says some of us may need outside help. It encourages hospitalization when needed.

Well… the sun is nice and high. I’ve had a cup of coffee. Writing this has cleared my mind and my mood has drastically improved. So, here is what we’ll do. I will make a one-time offer. If you send me an email at agkroger@gmail.com summarizing your program of recovery, regardless of what it is, I will post it. Explain the program’s advantages or why you like it. Whatever you want. I would prefer it if you did not criticize other programs, but simple tell us about yours. I will not edit it. I will not voice an opinion. If you want to send original artwork, I will post that as well. This is your chance to voice whatever it is you want about whatever it is you are doing.

I will accept emails until hmmmm… April 5th and I will post the blog on April 12th. I hope everyone has a great day.

Summer in Sobriety, Down by the Pool

Posted in AA Sobriety, Alcoolics Anonymous, Sober Living, Sobriety by

Hobo WeddingMy friend was telling me about a woman she had recently met. This woman was newly sober, just a couple weeks in. She was concerned that summer was around the block. Her husband and her were renowned for their pool parties, and she was worried that if they did not serve alcohol, no one would come. Two weeks sober and she’s are worried about pool parties? I would have laughed if I hadn’t known she was dead serious.

When I first got sober, I had my own obsession: my wedding day. As I remember, early on I met a girl who had met a boy on AA campus and had gotten married. She was telling me about their relationship and life, but I didn’t get further than… “Wedding? Hold up, you had a sober wedding? No one drank? No endless champagne toasts? No open bar? A dead sober wedding?” I could not imagine such a thing. So, I obsessed about it, what my sober wedding would look like. Would we serve alcohol, and I would just not drink, or would the whole wedding be dry? Would we have water in club soda in champagne glasses or would that just look tacky? Would anyone dance? All this time, I didn’t even have a boyfriend, let alone a fiancé.

And that, my friends, is how I know I am an alcoholic.

I read a startling statistic the other day: 60% percent of women drink at least one drink a year. That is not the part that startled me. What shocked me was that if 60% drink at least one drink a year, 40% of women do not drink at all! Nothing!

I think it is hard for heavy drinkers to fathom that many people do not drink. We think that if we order a Coke at a party, the record player will come to a screeching halt as the attention of the whole room focuses on our lack of a proper cocktail. The reality is no one cares. Wait… what I should say is no one cares, but the other alcoholics in the room, the other people who cannot imagine that one might forego a drink.

In our disease we only hung out with people like us, who did what we did. They acted like us and drank and used like us. It’s how we justified our own actions. Then when we get sober, I think our minds just grasp on to whatever we can. There’s so much going on and changing, the idea of changing everything, even our pool parties and wedding aspirations gets a little overwhelming.

I wish I could have talked to that lady. I would have told her not to worry. Some people won’t go to her party, the active alcoholics won’t go. But 40% of the population goes to pool parties to swim and 40% go to weddings to see the actual wedding. 40% don’t drink. Period. So find them. Be friends with them. Make the 40% your 100% and you’ll have rocking parties once again.

Heck, I’ll go. Let summer begin!

AA’s Success Rate

Posted in AA, AA Sobriety, Alcoholics Anonymous by

AA Success RateI was having a conversation with a co-worker. He graduated last year with a degree in psychology and is currently making steps to return to school to get his doctoral degree. I went to him because I had a question regarding an article I was reading. The article labeled AA as a failure because it is undirected group therapy.

Here is what he replied: “AA just doesn’t work. It has like a 98 percent failure rate.”

So I asked… “Which AAs are included in the studies of failure? I mean, who’s counted? Court appointed, once a week meeting goers, does that qualify someone as AA? Or is it based on a people who already have a foothold in the program? Over what period of time was the study? Cause over the course of a lifetime, people who come and go, sometimes come back and stay.”

Now, I have to cut my co-worker some slack. He really is an intelligent and charming individual. He just doesn’t know what he is talking about. And here’s the thing; I don’t think most doctors or psychologists or normies do. The people who tend to know the most about our disease of alcoholism and addiction seem to be us, the ones who have it (or at least the ones who know they have it). Doctors and psychologists seem to have no more insight into alcoholism than they had eighty years ago.

So, here is my totally unprofessional opinion regarding recidivism. I started out in AA totally wasted with a zero chance of not drinking for the rest of the day. I mean every day I wanted not to drink, but every night I ended up drunk. By myself, I had zero chance. Then one day, a miracle happened, and I had just a smidgen more willpower or disgust or stubbornness or something than I had just a few moments before. I don’t know how long this miracle lasts. For some people, I suspect it only lasts a few minutes. So, in those few moments, I needed to do something.

I think if I started at 0% and went to a meeting, I go up to about 5%. I start praying or else tapping into some kind of faith that maybe, just maybe, I can be sober for the rest of the day. I help someone. I am at 20%. I read the Big Book. 25%. Changing people, places, and things adds a few more percentage points. Sober living gives me lot more percentage points. Now, I’m up to 50%. I get a boyfriend, and I fall back down to 40%. I get sober friends who themselves are dedicated to being sober, and then I tell them everything that makes me cry at night. Back up to 50%. I get a sponsor. And I work the steps. And then I work them again. And then I work them again. And now I am 8 years sober.

I told my sweetie about what my co-worker said about AA not working. My love said, “I don’t care what he says. AA has a 100% success rate for me. And that’s all I really care about.” And he’s right.

I went that night to chair my usual meeting. It’s a small group, intimate. I’ve been sitting in a that room with some of these people a couple days a week for years now. I know them. I know their weaknesses and failures, their successes and growth.

About halfway through the hour, I looked out upon the group and started counting up years. B has 30-some years. S has another 20. B and A have 5. C has 4. J is closing in on a year. And R has come back and now has 5 months. And over there, in the corner, my sweetie has eight years.

Psychologists all over the world can tell me AA doesn’t work. What I know, is in that moment, in that meeting at 10:30 on a Wednesday night, ten people who normally would have been drunk weren’t. And to me, that’s 100% success rate.